Giving direct feedback can be difficult, especially if the feedback is in an area to improve rather than affirming an area of strength. When we give direct feedback poorly, what I have seen most often is either that it is rambling (“The other day were in a meeting and I know you are under a lot of stress and you probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded so I wasn’t offended but I wanted to mention it but it’s really nothing”) or it is accusatory (“Just wanted you to know I thought you acted like a real jerk in the meeting yesterday”).
The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has a tool for giving more effective feedback called SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact). The tool is intended to be a guide to help you give constructive feedback that is (hopefully) well received. The Situation is a factual description of the physical context of the occurrence. There should be no embellishment or analysis – it is just the situation in which the even occurred. The Behavior is a factual description of the observed behavior. There should be no attributing motivation. Adjectives are dangerous here. Just the facts, Ma’am. The Impact is where you get to describe how the behavior, in that situation, made you feel. The idea is that by describing the situation and the behavior in a non-judgmental way, and by describing your feelings in a calm and clear fashion, you can help the SBI
recipient grow, by helping him or her have a better understanding of how their words and action affect others.
An example of a bad SBI: “Tuesday at the status meeting you said ‘I, I, I’ about 30 times because you were taking credit for the team’s work and that made me feel unappreciated.” There is intent and motivation in the situation - you were purposefully trying to take credit.
A good SBI: “Tuesday at the status meeting I heard you say ‘I’ much more than “we” and that made me feel like the team was not being acknowledged for our contributions.”
We have been practicing this on each other where I work. We’ve done training, have shown good and bad examples and have practiced giving fictional SBI’s to each other before rolling out the real thing. We also have a person assigned to keeping track of SBI’s (we ask that they be written until we get better at them). We are finding that more than 90% cross the boundary into accusatory language. 9 out of 10 of them use those dangerous adjectives when describing the behavior. And we are seeing defensiveness or sometimes anger on the receiving end.
I believe there is a pattern to these poor SBIs. We have written them for ourselves. We treat them as cathartic, as a way to get something off our chest. As long as we write them for ourselves, we don’t care so much how they are received, because that’s not really the point. But when we write them to serve someone else – to help them grow, to give them the feedback perhaps no one else is giving them, we are less likely to use the kinds of words that make people react poorly. When we give feedback, we should think about our motivation. If it is not to help the receiver grow, we should consider waiting until it is.
To paraphrase Joseph Marie Eugène Sue, “An SBI is a dish best served warmly.”
